


and the gates of hell will not overcome us

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Betrayal, Biblical References, First War with Voldemort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 06:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2378081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter sees three boys at the train station, their magic forming thick shields around them that warp and flare, and knows that they will be monumental someday. And so he walks up to them, introduces himself with a sweet smile, and learns the very essence of each of them, all their deepest secrets and oddest hopes and most fervent loves. Peter sees it all, has always seen it all, and he files the information away for later days, harder days, when it will be valuable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the gates of hell will not overcome us

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why there are so many Biblical references, but the piece just turned into something with a mind of its own.

Peter, god bless his soul, has never been special.

But he’s always had a knack for latching on to important people, sometimes even before they know who they will become. A small amount of the Sight has run in the Pettigrew family for centuries, and Peter feels it like an itch right under his skin, pushing and pulling him towards his destiny.

Peter sees three boys at the train station, their magic forming thick shields around them that warp and flare, and knows that they will be monumental someday. And so he walks up to them, introduces himself with a sweet smile, and learns the very essence of each of them, all their deepest secrets and oddest hopes and most fervent loves. Peter sees it all, has always seen it all, and he files the information away for later days, harder days, when it will be valuable.

* * *

They all line up in the Great Hall, James Potter two people behind Peter and Remus Lupin three ahead, and Sirius heads up the line with an easy smile and a flippant attitude born of years of being the unquestioned best at everything.

“GRYFFINDOR!” The hat shouts, less than a second after touching Sirius’ head, and Sirius looks excited as he lopes over to the Gryffindor table to his new comrades.

Peter frowns, shuddering slightly, as he notices the glares being shot Sirius’ way from the Slytherin table. If Peter had been in his place, he would have gone to Slytherin, soul of a lion or not.

“So, Peter, where will you go?” The hat asks and Peter knows what will be best for him, so he replies in kind. “Slytherin would suit you, but you have reservations about it…”

“Gryffindor.” Peter thinks, frowning slightly as he watches the boys, before nodding.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

* * *

Peter is the least surprised when he shifts into a rat, late on a February afternoon, because rats never go down with sinking ships. Sirius laughs, hearty and strong, and slaps his knee. Coal black hair flops into silver eyes that shine bright with mirth as Sirius struggles to catch a full breath, wheezing loudly. His laugh tears out of him like a hurricane, all wild wind and harsh, grating noise.

Sirius seems to think he is a god, Peter muses as he pads up to the mirror to fully examine his new form, far beyond the reach of mortal worries. There are days when Sirius refers to himself as the prophet of a new age, as the star to set one’s hopes by, loudly in the common room, head thrown back in halfway laughter, and James will drag him away to some plan or another, easily hiding his fear behind a mask of arrogant bravado. Peter thinks James is the least genuine of them all, even when including himself in the count, and, considering Lily just wants something honest from him, Peter doubts that James will ever quite catch her attention.

This manic raving about power might be a product of his childhood, a ragged, scary thing that seems to Peter to be little more than hastily taped links of a monotonously gray paper chain, violently ripped apart at the hands of its maker, but it might just be a testament to Sirius’ personality, a bright and glorious gift to the carrier of a bright and glorious name.

Bright Black, Peter thinks, and snickers.

A funny name for a boy whose light goes so dim that, some days, he refuses to even leave his bed, claiming that his limbs will drag him to hell if he even sets foot on the ground. Those days are for Remus, rather than James, with his whisper quiet apologies that take up space until it feels like all the air in the world is gone. Sirius and Remus breathe as if the world has not condensed down to a single pinprick of light, so Peter runs far and fast and learns to fend for himself.

All of this would be fine if there weren’t a war coming, could be boiled down to simple teenage hubris, and he shakes his head once he’s shifted back, fur and tail melting away as if they’d never been.

“If the plague came through, I’d live.” Peter says, imitating Remus’ most grave expression successfully. It is slightly less effective, when paired with Peter’s fine blond hair and chubby frame rather than Remus’ elegant collection of hard lines and sharp angles, hastily put together but perfect in their disarray. “You’d never forgive me, would you?”

“Why would I ever forgive you if you left us to die, Petey?” Sirius grins, tongue tracing the top of his bottom lip before he chews on it.

“I can’t imagine.” Peter shrugs, feigning innocence, and thinks that he should like to send Sirius Black toppling down someday.

* * *

As their fifth year draws to a close, Sirius seems to explode into a pillar of flames, shifting from boy into blazing inferno just as easily as he shifts from boy to enthusiastic, irksome dog, and Peter watches as calmly as possible even as fear rises in the back of his throat, banging at the walls of his neck to be let out. Sirius is a danger to everyone, ironically more so than the literal werewolf they all hung out with, but mostly to himself. When it comes down to it, Sirius would much rather push the sword into his own stomach, call death an adventure and wholly embrace it, than put the effort into searching for any truth.

Sirius, in the end, will do himself in.

Peter holds a shadow of a smirk safely between his small, stubby hands, turning it over and over as it gains size and magnitude like a snowball rushing down the steep slope of a mountain, and waits for the ensuing avalanche to hit. Sirius, Remus and James can get swept away, if they’d like, but Peter will be safe, warm and cared for when the war comes to his doorstep.

Peter has information, and there is never a dearth of demand for information.

James writes to Peter in early July, his handwriting just as unsteady and smudged as always, saying that Sirius is “finally done with those tossers and Remus is already here, so you should come by, for a week or two, before school ends”. Peter tells them that his mother is ill (a lie—she is on vacation in Holland with family) and stays in hiding at the Pettigrew home, only leaving the house every week to get groceries and new library books.

He sees Sirius, James and Remus next when they meet up on the Platform, and he could swear, when he searches Sirius’ silver eyes for any sign of his last stand of defiance just being some childish prank, that Sirius seems disappointed.

“Nice to see you, Peter.” Remus smiles weakly, the bags under his eyes already large and swollen despite school still being out.

“Nice to see you, Remus.” Peter smiles just as weakly, brushing too long bangs out of his eyes. “And James and Sirius too, of course! I wouldn’t forget you!”

Sirius’ bad mood lifts, the clouds dispersing almost as suddenly as they drew together, and he smiles, throwing an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “I’m happy to see you, Wormy.”

“I’m happy to see you too, Pads.” Peter grins, eyes scrunched up so tightly that he doesn’t have to look at Sirius at all, and realizes that the pedestal is cracking.

* * *

He remembers hearing his name as a child, when his mother brought him to the run down Anglican church down the road.

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church”, Jesus says to Peter, and Peter used to feel pride in that statement as a child, wondering who he would support to the very end.

After meeting his friends, he imagines Remus as Jesus, a crown of thorns woven through the gentle waves of his sandy brown hair as blood trickles down his face, James as James the Greater, and Sirius, dear Sirius, as Judas, his silver eyes glinting like coins in the darkness. Peter is the rock upon which the Marauders are built, the foundation upon which the other boys stand when they reach for the stars, and he giggles as he thinks of what will become of them when he tears himself away.

They will fall, as he laughs at their misfortune, and it will be glorious.

In reality, Peter is much more of the Judas type, is much more willing to save himself in return for another, and anyone who claims Sirius is anything less than the most loved disciple to Remus’ Lamb of God is lying to themselves. James is James—son of the thunder, the very first forgotten martyr, a simple fisherman caught up in matters that he will never fully understand, and Peter is sad that James will surely fall in the defense of whatever silly dream the Order is rallying them around. James has always been too quick to trust, too quick to love, and perhaps that just comes from all the previous owners of his name playing second fiddle to Johns the same way that James always defers to Sirius.

Halfway through sixth year, James’ mother passes away and he gracelessly topples down from his fragile, cracked facsimile of a pedestal, crashing to the earth, and he shatters in a tangle of limbs and broken dreams. James won’t be the last of them to fall, Peter thinks, as Remus’ shoulders tense at the news and Sirius lays himself over James like a blanket, arms cinched tightly around his best friend’s torso. Peter would hardly trust himself to build a pedestal of his own, but if all the others fall as James has, then he will be the last left standing. And won’t that be a fitting end, all others beneath the thumb of Peter, crushed under the rock upon which they built eternal monuments to their glory.

James is crying and Sirius cries with him, but Remus and Peter are silent, but for entirely different reasons.

* * *

Peter Apparates onto a snowy sidewalk, two streets away from Spinner’s End, and enjoys the walk down streets lined with trees stained black from smoke. He imagines a younger Lily Evans, who is currently safely nestled in James’ arms inside the London apartment rather than mucking about in the snow, skipping about these streets with her arms spread wide. He imagines Lily discovering magic, imagines the look of wonder on her face, and thinks that it may well have been the same expression that creeps onto her face when she watches James.

He sees Severus Snape on the front step of a dilapidated house, clad in flowing black robes that Peter can’t imagine his Muggle neighbors don’t whisper about behind his back, with a cigarette nearly crushed between the thin line of his lips. Peter catches Severus eyeing him cautiously, and smiles readily, the same smile that tied him to the Marauders years ago. Severus nods slowly, still distrustful even in his offer of a pained looking smirk, before grabbing Peter’s upper arm and twisting them through space and time to a black, forbidding manor house.

“Do not speak unless he allows you.” Severus says before pushing Peter ahead of him and Peter nods. He knows, very well, how to behave around those who will be important.

“So you are the rat…” Lord Voldemort, a wraith-like man who is certainly older than Peter expected, says from where he is sitting regally in an ornate chair that may once have belonged to a king. “You truly wish to become ours.”

“My lord”, Peter says as he bows low. “I do have a bit of a talent for picking the winning side.”

“I see.” Lord Voldemort says, before turning to Rodolphus Lestrange. “Do it.”

Peter’s sleeve is rolled back roughly and a wand tip is pressed to his forearm as the Mark is burned into his skin.

Peter does not scream, only chuckles a bit after, because he is a rock, the rock, and he isn’t one to toot his own horn normally, but he could swear a good half of those Death Eaters were impressed.

* * *

“Goodbye Harry, James, Lily!” Peter calls, waving at the happy family behind him, before stepping onto the street. He holds the image close to his heart, a beatific James burying his face in his son’s thick shock of unruly black hair, the sudden spark of joy in Lily’s features every time she looks at her son and realizes their eyes match. He does not understand how two people he has known to be so mature, at times, can worship a wriggling bundle of skin and bones that can’t even say their names or do anything useful, but he knows they will die for him as surely as he knows how to breathe.

Figures, Peter snorts, that James would be a martyr for the cause. In another world, perhaps Peter would have been the one with the child, and James would have never sold him out, would have fought any torture to save his friend’s family. He knows any of the Marauders would have rather died than sell him out, but he has never quite been one of them, has he?

“Should have picked a better rock, Jamie.” He sniggers, wiping his runny nose, before sending the signal. He will never have to see any of them again, or face their disapproval, save Sirius, who will seek him out. But Sirius will be his own failing. There is hardly a need for Peter to do more than lift a finger, after this. “There’s an earthquake coming.”

Peter disappears with a crack, leaving no trace of his presence, and never returns.


End file.
